All posts tagged population

“Get married soon and have lots of children.” That’s the advice that 49-year-old Huang Wenzheng gave to college students at a recent forum in Beijing about China’s population and urban policy.

Mr. Huang, one of the most outspoken one-child policy opponents in China, along with other activists and economists, said at the forum that China needs babies more urgently than ever before, and the country’s economic fate depends on whether Beijing can do more to encourage child births. More on this after the jump… Read More »

As the WSJ’s Matthew Dolan reports today, one challenge for the emergency management team running the bankrupt government of Detroit is literally switching the lights back on. The city estimates almost half of its 88,000 street lights aren’t working, and in many cases the problem goes well beyond blown bulbs, with thieves stripping the poles of valuable copper wire.

But half the streetlights going dark is still not proportional to the exodus of people from the city: From a peak of 1.8 million a few decades ago, well over half have left, and Detroit’s population has fallen to 700,000. The lighting department, responsible for getting all those street lights working again, has been trimmed even more severely, Dolan reports, down from a 500-person staff at its peak to 85 today.

The exodus from the city is well illustrated in two graphics, which we’ve published after the jump… Read More »